In the Seven of Swords, we see a figure tiptoeing away with five swords, looking over his shoulder at the two swords that remain. At worst, we see a liar sneaking around, taking what they want without care for those who will be affected by their actions. If we look at this card in a better light, we see someone quietly making off with their own five best swords to create a peace for themselves without the two swords they must leave behind.
In the film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the main character, Joel Barish, mourns the end of his relationship with his girlfriend Clementine. He struggles with the problems that led them to break it off but he wants to try again or to try something. When he attempts to deliver an early valentine to Clementine, she seems not to know him at all. In his pain and confusion, he seeks comfort from friends who also know Clementine. He asks them how she could do something so cruel. After a few minutes of back and forth, it is revealed to Joel that Clementine had had her memories of Joel professionally erased. Clementine could not manage the pain she felt trying to move on. She could not cut the loss of those two swords.
In any reading of the Seven of Swords, there is a future that was once possible but can no longer be attained.
The Seven of Swords is a point of no return. If we read the card as deception, we know lies can not be taken back. Once the lie has been told, it cannot be untold. We might forgive the transgression and move on, but the relationship has shifted and is no longer the relationship in which the lie took place. If we read the Seven of Swords as taking our leave from a situation, most likely with no explanation, we know we are not going back and that we can not recoup the time or money or feeling or effort that we put into what we leave behind. In any reading of the Seven of Swords, there is a future that was once possible but is no longer attainable. Clementine, in her desperation to not feel the pain of losing her relationship with Joel, opts to have those two swords (Joel) erased from her memory entirely.
When Joel is confronted with the additional pain of his erasure from Clementine’s mind, he chooses to take the same route. Sometimes, the last act that lovers share is the act of simultaneous grieving for the loss of the dream they once dreamed together, and Joel had lost this too. But a Seven of Swords situation can not be circumvented even in a Sci-Fi world. Both Joel and Clementine continue to be distracted by a sense that something specific is missing. That missing part is not only the other but also the person they themselves were through the eyes of the other.
The Seven of Swords will always require our unfiltered acceptance of the reality of what happened. We might resist acceptance by going back and back and back over what we should have done differently, but nothing will come of this process except to haunt ourselves with our own regret. Acceptance does not mean that what has happened was for the best or that we are no longer bothered by the memory, it means simply that we accept that what has happened can not be changed and we become determined to make a meaningful life beyond it.
We might resist acceptance by going back and back and back over what we should have done differently, but nothing will come of this process except to haunt ourselves with our own regret.
Joel and Clementine erase each other from memory but manage to find one another in the present and proceed to fall in love all over again. Eventually, they are made aware of having their memories erased and the tapes they made with the erasing service about one another are returned to them.
When they both become privy to the very worst they believed the other to be during a hard and painful breakup, they are confronted with an entirely new Seven of Swords situation. The film ends with Joel and Clementine agreeing to try to be together despite their flaws and despite the painful words they heard from a past they don’t remember but that is guaranteed to be the future they must transcend. The agreement they make is to attempt to leave behind those two broken old swords, together.
May we all be so willing to make the leap from suffering.
Author of Daydream Tarot: A Basic Guide for Visionaries
Columnist for Antigravity Magazine
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